London to test ‘smart city’ operating system

“An operating system designed to power the smart cities of the future will be put through its paces in London. Living Plan IT has developed its Urban OS to provide a platform to connect services and citizens. With partners including Hitachi, Phillips and Greenwich council, it aims to use the Greenwich peninsula as a testbed for new technologies running on the system. The OS aims to connect key services such as water, transport, and energy.” UrbanOS goes way over my head – it’d be great if someone could summarise how it works and what its key aspects are.

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A bunch of sensors and measuring equipment are placed all around the city. They’re controlled in one spot. A bunch of software interprets the data. Then there are user software that allows people to use the data.

I’m not sure I like it – though of course, ultimately, that will depend on who “plays” it, and what disasters the “game” throws at them (what would fit London? Flood? The Blitz? Daleks? Royal wedding? Luckily we’re not talking about Tokyo & Godzilla-like monsters). Or, at least, in depends if I’m anywhere close to London.

I wonder if it will have portable terminals in the style of SimCity DS – say, for the mayor and other top staff.

I could see this being useful under certain circumstances. Mainly giving the city an infrastructure that can be centrally monitored from one location. Something similar to what cities do with disparate systems now such as power, rail, water etc… Maybe they would use this to monitor it all from once centralized location.

Unfortunately, this seems like it would be a prime target for hacking. I hope that cities who use this are smart and start off slow and take precautions (over and above the OS) to ensure that data traveling on this system is protected. However, being an eternal pessimist, leads me to think that there will be breaches quick and often.

I could see this being useful under certain circumstances. Mainly giving the city an infrastructure that can be centrally monitored from one location. Something similar to what cities do with disparate systems now such as power, rail, water etc… Maybe they would use this to monitor it all from once centralized location.

Unfortunately, this seems like it would be a prime target for hacking. I hope that cities who use this are smart and start off slow and take precautions (over and above the OS) to ensure that data traveling on this system is protected. However, being an eternal pessimist, leads me to think that there will be breaches quick and often.

It’s not outside breaches I’d be worried about – it’s the system becoming self aware.

eg you run a red light; the OS gets pissed off with you and then floods your house.

Seriously though, last time I read up on UrbanOS the documentation was light on detail about their security / safety protocols. I too hope there is some pretty advanced (and upgradable) systems in place and that they’re not just relying on security by obscurity.

Start planning your defenses now because it will become self aware. It also throws another meaning at the phrase “going off the grid”.

But in all seriousness, I haven’t seen too much about the security either. I could have missed something but do we even know if it’s written from the ground up or a pseudo os running on top of Windows or Linux?

Even though I’m concerned with security, I find this really interesting in term of monitoring / consumption prediction. I imagine a statistical analysis of all those sensors could lead to a lot of optimizations in the way power/water/whatever is distributed, constructed and so on.

Now, regarding the security, I’d say that if it is only used for _monitoring_, security is probably not such a big deal. I mean there are still risk that some hacker fake the statistics or spy someone’s power consumption, but I don’t see any major security risk there. Plus, if my city would put such a system in place, I’d except the data to be public anyway.

Now, if it’s really used to actually control the distributions, it’s a completely different story.

Ah yeah, it has too many buzzwords too, but I guess they had to find a way to sell it 😀